New Florence airport terminal will have a vineyard on its roof

From the “Walkie Talkie” skyscraper in London, to the Carrasco International Airport in Uruguay, New York-based firm Rafael Viñoly Architects’ portfolio consists of hundreds of projects spanning five continents. The latest addition, announced in January, will be a new international terminal at the Aeroporto Amerigo Vespucci in Florence, the capital of the Italian region of Tuscany. The structure will serve “as a new landmark for the city’s sustainable future,” according to the firm, and as an homage to the region’s wine-producing heritage, it will have a vineyard on the roof. “The concept of the building is to recreate the most quintessential Tuscan landscape, which is the vineyard — and then to peel one end of the vineyard up from the floor to create a slope, and slide an airport underneath that slope,” says Román Viñoly, director of Rafael Viñoly Architects. Set to be completed in two phases, anticipated for 2026 and 2035, Viñoly says sustainability is at the heart of the new structure, calling it a “moral responsibility of anybody building anything.” The construction sector and the built environment are responsible for 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions. Meanwhile about 2.5% of all emissions is produced by commercial aviation. Efforts to reduce this impact have often focused on innovations in plane fuel, including fuel made from cooking oil, and even sewage, but this new project turns the attention to the operation and construction of the airport itself.<br/>